The Quick Read
- The ignorance of women’s labour extends beyond unpaid housework. It includes caregiving, work on family farms and in businesses, emotional labour, informal employment, and organisational tasks that rarely influence pay or promotion.
- India’s 2024 Time Use Survey found that 81.5% of women participated in unpaid domestic work, compared with 27.1% of men.
- Women participating in domestic work spent an average of 289 minutes a day on it, while participating men spent 88 minutes.
- Women’s employment participation is rising, but paid work has not produced an equivalent redistribution of work at home.
- Globally, unpaid care responsibilities keep an estimated 708 million women outside the labour force.
- Women also dominate paid care occupations, where work is frequently undervalued because the skills involved are treated as natural feminine qualities rather than professional expertise.
- Employers contribute to the problem when women are expected to organise, support, mentor and maintain workplace culture without recognition in pay, workload or advancement.
- Recognition cannot stop at attaching an estimated monetary value to unpaid work. India needs care infrastructure, fairer household participation, decent care jobs, stronger ownership rights and workplaces that stop relying on women’s invisible labour.
The normalisation of the ignorance of women’s labour
The working day begins before a woman reaches work. Someone has prepared breakfast. Someone has packed a school bag, checked whether an ageing parent took a medicine, found the missing uniform, planned dinner, reminded the domestic worker about an errand and noticed that groceries will not last until Friday. In many homes, that someone is a woman.
She may then travel to an office, factory, hospital, school, farm or shop and complete a second category of work that the economy is willing to recognise. Her salary enters the payroll. Her attendance enters the system. And her output appears on a dashboard.
The work performed before and after it does not. That is the central contradiction behind the ignorance of women’s labour.
Women’s paid employment is increasing in India and across several parts of the world. Yet societies have not redistributed unpaid work at a comparable pace. Women are entering labour markets without leaving the older responsibilities assigned to them. The result is frequently described as a “double burden”. Even that expression can understate the problem.
Women may be performing paid work, unpaid household labour, caregiving, community support and invisible organisational labour on the same day. Some are also contributing to family farms, shops and enterprises without an independent wage or ownership.
A woman can therefore work throughout the day and remain statistically unemployed, economically dependent or professionally overlooked.
The work exists. Recognition appears only when the market decides that it counts.
India’s time-use data records the imbalance clearly
India’s 2024 Time Use Survey makes the division of labour difficult to dismiss as anecdotal.
Among people aged six and above, 81.5% of women participated in unpaid domestic services for household members, compared with 27.1% of men. Among those who performed this work, women spent an average of 289 minutes a day on it. Participating men spent 88 minutes.
Caregiving showed a similar imbalance. Among women aged 15 to 59, 41% participated in caring for household members, compared with 21.4% of men. Women who provided care spent an average of 140 minutes a day, against 74 minutes for participating men.
These are not occasional favours. They represent a regular transfer of time from women to households.
A woman’s day is being used to produce meals, cleanliness, health, education, emotional stability and the next generation of workers. Because no invoice is raised, the activity is treated as private life rather than economic production.
The distinction is convenient for the economy. It receives the output without paying the full cost.
More women working does not mean the labour has become equal
Women’s workforce participation is improving.
The World Bank estimates that India’s female labour-force participation rate rose from 22.9% in 2018 to 35.3% in 2025. It has also estimated that raising women’s participation to 50% could add approximately one percentage point to India’s annual economic growth.
This progress deserves attention. But the headline can conceal the structure underneath it.
A woman counted as working may be:
- Helping without pay on a family farm;
- Assisting in a household shop;
- Producing goods for family use;
- Doing irregular home-based piecework;
- Self-employed because formal jobs are inaccessible;
- Earning while remaining responsible for most domestic work.
Research released in August 2026 warned that more than half of women’s total labour contribution may remain unpaid, compared with approximately one-third of men’s. It also questioned whether apparent improvements in India’s formal participation fully represent better economic opportunities, since unpaid assistance in family enterprises may be counted as work.
It does not mean unpaid family work is not real work. Instead, it means participation statistics cannot be treated automatically as evidence of independence, wages, ownership or decision-making power.
A woman can be counted as economically active while having no control over the income generated.
The economy recognises transactions more easily than contributions
Conventional economic measures are designed to capture market production.
- When a restaurant cooks a meal, the activity contributes to measured output.
- When a woman cooks for five people at home, it does not.
- When a childcare centre supervises a child, the service has a price.
- When a mother rearranges her working day to provide the same care, the economic system records neither the service nor the opportunity she lost.
- When a professional caregiver assists an older person, that work enters employment data.
- When a daughter or daughter-in-law performs it without pay, it becomes family responsibility.
The activity has not fundamentally changed. Its visibility has. It creates an odd economic logic: the same work can acquire value merely by crossing the boundary of the household.
The problem is not only statistical. What societies fail to count, they frequently fail to fund.
Childcare becomes a personal arrangement rather than employment infrastructure. Eldercare becomes a daughter’s moral responsibility rather than a public-policy concern. Domestic work is described as unskilled despite requiring planning, coordination, physical effort, judgement and constant adaptation.
The absence of a market price is mistaken for the absence of value.
The word “natural” has hidden a great deal of labour
Women’s labour is frequently ignored because it is described as instinctive.
Women are assumed to be naturally better at:
- Caring;
- Listening;
- Remembering;
- Comforting;
- Organising;
- Anticipating needs;
- Keeping families connected;
- Resolving interpersonal tension.
When a skill is called natural, the person performing it no longer appears to have learnt, practised or worked at it.
The same pattern enters paid employment.
Nursing, teaching, childcare, domestic work and community health support rely on significant technical and interpersonal competence. Yet many care occupations remain poorly paid and insecure.
The International Labour Organisation reports that women make up approximately 65% of workers in the care economy. It also identifies persistent deficits in wages, status, social protection, working time and occupational safety.
The work becomes visible enough to employ women. It does not always become valuable enough to reward them fairly.
It helps explain why occupations can lose status and pay as they become associated with women. The market does not merely assess the difficulty of the work. It inherits social beliefs about who is expected to perform it.
India’s rural economy runs on work women do not always own
The invisibility is especially clear in agriculture and family enterprises.
A woman may sow, weed, harvest, tend livestock, process produce, maintain accounts and sell goods. Yet the land title may belong to a man. The business registration may carry another family member’s name. The income may enter a joint household pool controlled elsewhere.
Her work is essential. Her ownership is uncertain.
Change in Content recently examined how women’s growing agricultural employment can conceal unpaid family labour and weak ownership. A rise in women’s work cannot deliver empowerment when women remain labourers on assets they do not control.
Recognition must therefore include more than wages. It must include:
- Land titles;
- Business ownership;
- Bank access;
- Decision-making authority;
- Access to credit;
- Control over income;
- Representation in producer organisations.
Calling a woman a farmer while denying her ownership leaves the hierarchy largely intact.
Homemakers are not economically inactive
The language used for women outside paid employment also deserves scrutiny.
“Not working.” “Dependent.” “Housewife.” “Economically inactive.”
These labels can describe a woman who works from early morning until late at night.
The Delhi High Court has recognised that a homemaker’s unpaid domestic labour has economic value and should not be ignored when courts decide maintenance. That recognition matters because financial dependence is often produced through the household division of work itself.
One spouse accumulates income, assets, professional experience and social-security benefits. The other produces the domestic conditions that make this accumulation possible. Treating the second spouse as non-contributing misunderstands how the household economy was built.
Our earlier report on the Delhi High Court’s recognition of homemakers’ unpaid labour explored why maintenance should not be interpreted as charity given by an earning spouse. It is one method of acknowledging an economic contribution that the household did not pay for when it was performed.
Paid employment often adds work instead of redistributing it
Employment is essential to women’s independence, but employment alone cannot repair an unequal household structure.
A woman may receive a salary and still remain the default person responsible for:
- Children’s schedules;
- School communication;
- Family meals;
- Care arrangements;
- Domestic staffing;
- Medical appointments;
- Festivals and family obligations;
- Household supplies;
- Emergency planning.
That is sometimes called the mental load.
The physical task may be shared occasionally. Responsibility for noticing, planning and ensuring completion often remains with the woman.
A man may cook dinner when asked. A woman may still have decided what to cook, checked the ingredients, remembered dietary restrictions and planned around the following morning.
Task-sharing is not the same as responsibility-sharing. Women’s increased paid work has therefore produced an incomplete transition. The market accepted women’s labour. Many households did not renegotiate the work waiting at home.
The workplace also consumes invisible female labour
The ignorance of women’s labour does not end at the office entrance. Women are often expected to perform organisational tasks that help workplaces function but carry limited professional reward.
They may be asked to:
- Welcome new employees;
- Take notes during meetings;
- Organise celebrations;
- Mentor colleagues;
- Support distressed team members;
- Mediate conflict;
- Maintain social relationships;
- Serve on every diversity initiative;
- Explain sexism to the organisation;
- Perform the administrative work behind collaborative projects.
This labour has value. It supports retention, communication, employee confidence and workplace culture. Yet it may not appear in performance metrics, promotion discussions or compensation.
A woman may spend significant time maintaining the team while a colleague uses the same hours on work more directly associated with revenue and leadership.
At appraisal time, one is praised as helpful. The other is promoted for strategic impact.
Employers must stop relying on women to provide workplace care as an informal extension of personality. Culture work should be assigned consciously, shared fairly and recognised where it forms a real part of someone’s contribution.
“Helping” women is not the same as redistributing work
Many workplace interventions focus on helping women cope better.
Time-management sessions. Resilience training. Well-being workshops. Advice on setting boundaries.
These may offer some value. They can also avoid the underlying question. Why does the work remain arranged this way?
A woman does not need a productivity technique to solve the absence of childcare. Similarly, a working mother cannot meditate her way out of an unreliable care system. And a professional caring for two ageing parents does not need another lecture on personal organisation when every hospital visit occurs during office hours.
The solution to an excessive burden cannot be endless improvement in the burden-bearer. The work must move.
Care is infrastructure for every enterprise
Companies frequently treat childcare, eldercare and family support as employee benefits. They are also workforce infrastructure.
An employer benefits when workers arrive rested, children are safely supervised, and family emergencies are manageable. It benefits when experienced women do not leave because the household cannot absorb the cost of their employment.
Globally, the ILO estimates that unpaid care responsibilities keep 708 million women outside the labour force, compared with 40 million men. Care is the main stated reason for labour-market non-participation among hundreds of millions of women.
It is not a niche women’s issue. It is a massive restriction on the available workforce. Companies that want women’s talent must participate in the systems that make employment possible.
Depending on the workforce, that can include:
- Childcare facilities or partnerships;
- Childcare allowances;
- Predictable scheduling;
- Emergency care leave;
- Flexible work with career continuity;
- Eldercare assistance;
- Safe transport;
- Paid parental leave for men;
- Phased return after major care transitions.
The purpose is not to make women infinitely capable of handling everything. It is to stop arranging employment around the assumption that someone else provides care for free.
Paid care work must not remain cheap because unpaid care was free
The care economy offers significant employment potential.
Greater investment in childcare, eldercare, disability support, healthcare and community services could create jobs while allowing more women to participate in other forms of paid work. But a care economy built on low-paid women would reproduce the same injustice in a different location.
Domestic workers, Anganwadi workers, ASHAs, childcare workers, nurses and community workers frequently perform socially indispensable labour under weak employment conditions.
Their work is praised as service. But praise cannot replace:
- Fair wages;
- Employment status;
- Social security;
- Safe working conditions;
- Reasonable hours;
- Professional training;
- Collective representation;
- Career progression.
The care economy should not become a system in which better-paid women transfer their unpaid burden to poorer women whose labour remains undervalued. Recognition must travel through the entire chain.
Putting a price on unpaid work is useful but insufficient
Economists and policymakers have attempted to estimate the monetary value of unpaid household and care work. Such calculations are important. They show that the activity dismissed as private duty represents an enormous economic contribution.
These calculations can also create the illusion that recognition is complete once a number is attached. The deeper objective is not to convert every family relationship into a commercial transaction.
A parent does not care for a child only because the service has a market value. Families contain affection, responsibility and reciprocity that cannot be reduced to wages.
The policy purpose of valuation is different. It should help societies recognise:
- How much time women contribute;
- What paid opportunities they lose;
- Why public services matter;
- Why divorce and maintenance decisions must account for unpaid work;
- Why pensions and social protection should include caregivers;
- Why men must undertake a fairer share;
- Why growth statistics provide an incomplete picture.
Recognition is the beginning of redistribution, not its substitute.
The language of choice often conceals constraint
Discussions about women’s work frequently rely on the language of preference.
- “She chose to stay home.”
- “She prefers flexible work.”
- “She helps in the family business.”
- “She did not want the promotion.”
- “She is more comfortable handling the children.”
Some of these statements may be true. Choice cannot be evaluated without examining the alternatives.
- Did affordable childcare exist?
- Was the worksite safe?
- Could the household survive the cost of transport and care?
- Would the husband reduce his working hours?
- Did the employer offer flexibility without a promotion penalty?
- Could the woman control the income she earned?
A decision made within narrow options should not be mistaken for an unconstrained preference. Women exercise agency every day. They do so inside structures that distribute time, money and responsibility unevenly.
What should HR leaders measure?
Human-resource teams cannot reorganise every household. They can stop pretending that work begins and ends inside the company.
A useful organisational assessment should examine:
Time
- Who works predictable hours?
- Who receives late meeting requests?
- Who performs unpaid organisational work?
- Who regularly uses leave for care?
Progression
- Do women who use flexibility receive promotions at comparable rates?
- What happens to women’s careers after maternity or eldercare leave?
Work allocation
- Who receives visible, commercial assignments?
- Who performs more administrative and culture-maintenance work?
Attrition
- At which life stages do women leave?
- Which managers lose the most women?
- What reasons do departing employees give privately?
Benefits
Can frontline and contractual women use childcare and health support, or are benefits concentrated among corporate employees?
Men’s participation
- Do men use parental and care leave?
- Do leaders model shared caregiving, or are family-friendly policies treated as women’s programmes?
The goal is not to monitor private family life. It is to identify where workplace design depends on unequal private labour.
Men must enter the conversation as workers and caregivers
Women’s unpaid burden cannot decline through women-only policies. Men must be able and expected to provide care.
A father who takes parental leave changes more than his own household. He signals that caregiving is compatible with male ambition. A senior leader who reschedules a meeting for school pickup makes care visible as an ordinary human responsibility rather than a female exception. Policies should therefore avoid reinforcing the idea that women work and men support women’s work.
Men care. Women work. Both statements should be normal.
UN Women’s framework for transforming care calls for recognition, reduction, redistribution, reward, representation and resourcing. It treats care as a responsibility shared among women and men, households, communities, businesses and the state.
Redistribution is the step most likely to meet resistance because it asks someone else to contribute time, money or authority. That is also why it matters.
What India must change
India will not correct the ignorance of women’s labour through one policy. It requires movement across several systems.
Count work more accurately
Time-use surveys should continue regularly and inform labour, care and social-policy decisions. Employment data must distinguish paid employment, unpaid family work, subsistence production and independent income.
Build care infrastructure
Affordable childcare, eldercare, disability support and community health services should be treated as economic infrastructure.
Strengthen women’s ownership
Women working on farms and family enterprises need stronger access to land, business registration, finance, markets and income control.
Improve care jobs
Paid care work must offer decent wages, social protection and professional progression.
Recognise unpaid contribution in law
Maintenance, compensation, inheritance and social-security systems should account for the economic consequences of unpaid caregiving.
Redesign employment
Employers must provide career-compatible flexibility, predictable work, care support and equal access to consequential assignments.
Redistribute household labour
Men’s participation cannot remain symbolic. Responsibility for planning and completing domestic and care work must become genuinely shared.
None of these measures asks society to diminish family care. They ask society to stop obtaining it through women’s unequal sacrifice.
A full day’s work should not disappear because no salary was paid
The phrase “working woman” is often used to distinguish women in paid employment from women at home. The distinction should trouble us.
Most women are working. Some are paid, while some are not. Some are underpaid, while some are counted as helpers. And some are doing several forms of labour at once.
The central economic divide is not between women who work and women who do not. It is between labour the system has chosen to recognise and labour it continues to receive without adequate reward.
Ignorance of women’s labour: The change ahead
No country can claim gender equality while its homes, communities and workplaces depend on women’s invisible labour.
More women entering paid employment is progress. It is incomplete progress when women return from paid work to an unequal second shift. It is fragile progress when women are concentrated in insecure family work. And it is compromised progress when paid care remains cheap because societies believe women will provide care regardless.
The ignorance of women’s labour is not an accidental statistical omission. It is a method through which economies avoid paying their full operating costs.
Households save money. Employers inherit workers whose daily lives have already been organised. Governments postpone investment in care. Markets benefit from labour made possible elsewhere. Women supply the missing time.
Recognition must now move beyond appreciation. It must change budgets, infrastructure, wages, ownership, workplace systems and the division of labour at home.
Women do not need every act of care to become a transaction. They need societies to stop treating their time as an endlessly renewable public resource.
All labour creates value. Gender equality will remain unfinished until our economies, employers and homes learn to act accordingly.
Editorial Note
This editorial uses “women’s labour” to include paid employment, unpaid domestic and care work, unpaid family-enterprise work, informal work and less visible organisational labour. Unpaid work is not inherently undesirable. Care and household contribution can be meaningful parts of family and community life. The inequality arises when the work is assigned disproportionately, restricts economic choice, receives insufficient support or leaves the person performing it without income, ownership, rest or social protection. Statistics on employment participation and time use measure different aspects of work and should not be interpreted as interchangeable.
Principal Sources
- Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation: Time Use Survey 2024, covering paid work, domestic services, care work and gender differences in time allocation.
- International Labour Organisation: Global estimates on unpaid care responsibilities and women’s labour-force participation.
- International Labour Organisation: Evidence on decent-work deficits and women’s representation across the care economy.
- UN Women: International Day of Care and Support resources on unpaid care, paid care work and the redistribution of responsibility.
- World Bank: India’s female labour-force participation and the relationship between women’s work and economic growth.
- University of New South Wales: Research collection examining the continuing invisibility of women’s paid and unpaid labour across countries.
